Good reader thread responding to my somewhat tossed off remark that, "While you should definitely encourage users to customize their avatars, you also want to impose optimization restrictions so avatars don't become a bloated lag-inducing disaster like they have in SL."
The problem, as Alicia observes, is the company behind Second Life has enabled (encouraged?) poor optimization:
Linden Lab has set the maximum for textures at 1024×1024, and most creators end up making their textures too damn big (any texture size over 1024×1024 max), which then will be forced to the max of 1024×1024; but, remember that LL never set limits on how many verts/faces a mesh item should have. The textures issues, on the other hand, can easily be fixed if people simply went with the allotted sizes (64×64, 128×128, 256×256, 512×512 and the 1024×1024 max) SL can manage.
Also, knowing how to keep the MB down on the textures also helps if the person knows what their doing in GIMP, PhotoShop, or any other photo manipulation program. When it comes to mesh, you still have mesh hair that shoots an avi's complexity near or past 100k, and the same thing can happen with jewelry, clothing, etc. Verts/faces counts also increase/decrease when you resize any mesh object (trees, shrubs, etc.) All of these individual issues ultimately becomes a huge problem that never gets handled as LL only wants to continue working as is…
Everyone knows that LL will never impose restrictions on how maximum number of verts a mesh item can have.
Pulsar argues that Linden Lab should set out rewards and/or restrictions around mesh:
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